When I saw Electric Blue Crayfish for first time I couldn’t help but bring 3 of them home. Next day morning I had shock of my life. Saw one of them upside down, dead in far end of the tank. Next shock was finding 3 crayfish crawling around the tank + the dead one. I had no idea Crayfish shed it’s shell time to time. This process is called molting.
Next interesting thing I observed was they don’t let molted shell go waste. They would start eating is pretty soon. Have you ever seen anything like that ? Here are few videos from Youtube Crayfish shedding shell.
Few things about Crayfish
- Crayfish are amazing escape artist. So if you want to keep one of these guys then you need to make sure your tank is escape proof.
- They are full time scavengers eating everything including dead fish and live fish if they can catch. So it’s not a good idea to keep slow moving fish or sick fish with them.
- Freshwater dwarf crayfish types have short lifespans. They live only around 5-7 years.
- Electric Blue Crayfish is the original type, Other types like red, white, pink variants are bred from them.
- Never ever try to keep them fish large carnivore fish. Specially with Oscar fish. They do love hunting down and munching small
Crayfish at Amazon
It looks like some nice freshwater Crayfish and other invertebrates are available at Amazon for sale. You might want to check them out. No need to order but take a look at these guys you might learn more from those bought these beauties.
Keeping Crayfish
It’s better to have at least 30 gallon aquarium if you want to keep Crayfish. They like clean water with 6.5 to 8.5 PH Level so there should be a good filtration system.There should plenty of shelters and caves as hiding places, specially when there are several crayfish in same tank.